Subscribe to our mailing list

Mounir Fatmi

Gallery News for Mounir Fatmi

mounir fatmi features on the Pensacola Museum of Art’s latest group exhibition

mounir fatmi is one of a dynamic roster of national and international artists included on the traveling group exhibition, Cut Up/Cut Out, currently hosted by the Pensacola Museum of Art in Florida (2 March – 17 June). In showcasing various artworks in both 2D and 3D format, the exhibition explores the many methods of decorative piercing and cutting in contemporary art practice and how artists have extended these methods to a variety of both conventional and alternative media.

mounir fatmi participates on a group show at the Von der Heydt Kunsthalle in Germany

mounir fatmi is one of seven international artists contributing towards the Von der Heydt Kunsthalle’s group exhibition, Systems of demarcation, in Wuppertal, Germany (25 February – 6 May). The exhibition features artworks that utilise different media to investigate the complex of topics of migration, colonisation, exclusion and identity within the transnational landscape of the contemporary world.

mounir fatmi on urbanism and architecture biennial in China

mounir fatmi participates in the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture in Nantou Old Town in Shenzhen, China (15 December – 17 March). Under the theme of “Cities, Grow in Difference”, the biennial emphasises the multiplicity of identities and perspectivesin a diverse society. Drawing from the analogy of the city as “the Jungle of Growth”, the curatorial team of the biennial intend for the visual conversation created at the event to explore ideas of differences, hybridity and resistance. The exhibitions are spread across various locations – public parks and squares, residences and industrial buildings – in Nantou Old Town. Featuring works that constitute subtle urban interventions, which infiltrate into one’s daily life and encourage unexpected encounters and discoveries, the exhibition responds to what George Brecht once said, “[t]he most important things are the insignificant ones happening in the street”.

mounir fatmi and Gabrielle Goliath at the 11th African Biennale of Photography

fatmi and Goliath have been selected to participate in the 11th edition of the African Biennale of Photography in Bamako, Mali (2 December – 31 January). Taking place at the Musée National du Mali, the biennale is aimed at promoting the various trends in contemporary photography and video in Africa through creating and establishing international exchanges between artists, the public, curators, the media and international collectors.

mounir fatmi exhibits work in Japan

fatmi exhibits work on the exhibition, Diaspora Now! – Contemporary Arts around the Homeland, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Gifu, Japan (10 November – 8 January). The exhibition features artists who seek means of expression in new lands, gathering artistic subjects and standing alongside refugees, to draw the world’s attention to the plight of people who have been displaced in different ways.

mounir fatmi on exhibition at the Bandjoun Station Art Center

The Bandjoun Station Art Center exhibits work by mounir fatmi in its group exhibition, Newwwar. It’s Just a Game?, in Bandjoun, Cameroon (Opening 17 November). The exhibition brings together work by more than 20 artists to tackle the new ways that war is waged in the 21st century: remote-controlled, gamified, fictionalised and staged.

mounir fatmi at video festival in Brazil

Video work by mounir fatmi is featured at the VIII Festival du Film Documentaire de Cachoeira in Bahia, Brazil (4 – 10 September). The festival promotes the diffusion of art and documentary films as their own unique cinematographic genres, as their content and aesthetics present many possibilities and generate much interest amongst the Brazilian public, critics and researchers. Using the consolidated space of the city, the festival creates a space for the production and articulation of global images, sounds and the re-presentation of current affairs.

mounir fatmi at Institut Des Cultures d’Islam in Paris

mounir fatmi participates in a group exhibition, Lettres ouvertes, de la calligraphie au street-art, at the Institut Des Cultures d’Islam in Paris (1 September – 21 January). The exhibition explores the calligraphic dimensions in the contemporary arts and testifies to the universality of research around the art of writing, fueled in particular by traditional Arab and Far Eastern calligraphy. The artists exhibiting all approach letters and signs as field of graphic, aesthetic and poetic experiments.

mounir fatmi takes 'Pavilion of Exile' to Morocco

fatmi participates in a solo exhibition, The Pavilion of Exile, at Galerie Delacroix in Tangier, Morocco (26 July – 15 October). The Pavilion of Exile is a traveling project that the artist launched in 2016, which inverts the established structures of temporary exhibitions, questioning ideas of nationhood, exile and various forms of displacement. Through the exhibition, fatmi examines both the global and specific nature of the links between the various forms of displacement, whether it be the situation of the migrant worker, the expatriate, the refugee or the exile of war, natural disasters, economic problems, political or racial persecution.

mounir fatmi at Bellevue Arts Museum in US

fatmi participates in a group exhibition, Cut Up/Cut Out (30 June – 22 October), at the Bellevue Arts Museum in the Pacific Northwest state of Washington, USA. Cut Up/Cut Out is an exhibition by international artists who explore the captivating methods of decorative piercing and cutting, using a wide range of media from paper and plastic to metal and rubber.

mounir fatmi at Al-Tiba9 Barcelona 2017

fatmi participates in the fifth edition of Al-Tiba9 Barcelona 2017, an international contemporary art exhibition organised by curators from Algeria, at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (10 – 11 June 2017). The fifth edition features an exhibition of works of art with installations, sculptures, photography, painting, video and internet art, and will continue at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Algiers in Algeria during the month of September 2017.

mounir fatmi showcases at Côté Court festival

fatmi’s short film, The Blinding Light, is showcased at the 26th edition of Côté Court festival in Pantin, France (7 – 17 June). Initiated in 1992 by Seine-Saint-Denis and the city of Pantin, the festival is devoted to short films.

mounir fatmi at Museum De Wieger in Netherlands

fatmi features on Beautiful Stranger, a group exhibition at the Museum De Wieger in Deurne, Netherlands (21 May – 17 September). On view are a selection of paintings, photos and multimedia from the Nadour Collection, one of the most important collections of contemporary Arab and Iranian art.

mounir fatmi on Tunisian Pavilion at 57th Venice Biennale

Fatmi features on Tunisia’s national pavilion, The Absence of Paths, at the 57th La Biennale di Venezia, the country’s first pavilion since 1958. Fatmi’s contribution, a series of photographic works, forms part of the pavilion’s exploration into human migration and how movement is becoming increasingly policed.

Various artists on NSK State Pavilion at Venice Biennale

mounir fatmi, Candice Breitz, Oliver Chanarin and Kendell Geers are included in the NSK State-in-Time Pavilion (11 May – 15 July) at Palazzo Ca’tron, which takes place in the context of the 57th La Biennale di Venezia. Organised by NSK State in Time, it stands as an independent pavilion that will seek to redefine the idea of the state, and rethink what a contemporary state can be. It critically examines the issues that most trouble geopolitical states of today – migration, citizenship, history and identity, particularly as they relate to current-day Europe.

Various artists on Parisian video art festival

Four Goodman Gallery artists – Mounir Fatmi, Haroon Gunn-Salie, Paulo Nazareth and Tracey Rose – are included in Le Carreau du Temple’s video art festival,Videobox Festival: De Bruits et de Mouvements, in Paris (27–29 April). The festival focuses on how contemporary video artists use filmic works and practices to challenge and redefine the notion of ‘the gaze’ inherent within Western art.

Kendell Geers and Mounir Fatmi on Bataille show in France

Work by Kendell Geers and Mounir Fatmi appears on the exhibition DÉPENSES, curated by Léa Bismuth, in which 11 artists respond to the writing of Georges Bataille. The exhibition, at Labanque in Béthune, France until 26 February 2017, will feature Geers’ Kaput Mortuum XXXV (2014) and The Rest (2016) by Fatmi.

Mounir Fatmi holds second solo exhibition at ADN Galeria, Barcelona

Mounir Fatmi currently has his second solo exhibition at ADN Galeria in Barcelona, titled The Index and the Machine, which runs until April 2017. The show’s title harks back to the Renaissance period when the printing machine was created and when the first Index (the list of books prohibited by the Church) was published. The printing press was one of the defining inventions of the Renaissance, dramatically shifting the terms of cultural production by allowing for the dissemination of ideas beyond the teachings of the church, but also the proliferation of Bible publications and the Church’s List of Prohibited Books (Index librorum prohibitorum). These hallmark moments of the Western Renaissance form the basis of Fatmi’s show.

mounir fatmi in France and at the Setouchi Triennale

Depth of Field, a solo exhibition by Mounir Fatmi, features a series of new work and site-specific installations created specifically for the grand opening of Labanque Bethune Contemporary Art Center in France. The ghost of Georges Bataille haunts the exhibition, and connects the underlying themes found in the work presented: the powerlessness of language, the multitude of perceptions, and the divisions between the body, sex, history and religion. Depth of Field questions the relevance of looking at a work of art in a world full of violence and current media fascination. The exhibition runs from 22 April to 28 August 2016. Fatmi will also take part in the 2016 Setouchi Triennale. Venues on several small islands in the Setouchi region of central Japan will host installations and art shows as part of this festival, which takes place in several phases throughout the year, and features work by well over 100 artists from Japan and beyond.

Mounir Fatmi in Marrakech

Mounir Fatmi’s solo exhibition, Darkening Process, which opened in January at the Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts, is based upon the idea of the Other; towards literature, Art History, figures and scientific experiments. Darkening Process consists of a series of photographic and video works, a sound installation and archival documents. The exhibition runs until 30 May. Work by Fatmi has also been included on the group exhibition Merchants of Dreams, which is divided into two parts and presented simultaneously at Brandts 13 and Viborg Kunsthal, Denmark until 8 May.

Mounir Fatmi on various shows worldwide

The work of Mounri Fatmi features on the following shows worldwide: Global Control and Censorship at ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, until May 2016; Le monde selon… at FRAC Franche Comté, Besançon, France, until 17 January 2016; Unprotected Zone at Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Israel, until 30 April 30 2016 and Telling Time at the 10th Rencontres de Bamako Biennale panafricaine de Photographie, Bamako, Mali until 31 December 2015. Fatmi also released an artist book titled “History is not mine” in partnership with the Bamako Biennale.

Alfredo Jaar and Mounir Fatmi in Rotterdam

The opening film programme of a new series titled The Migrant (Moving) Image took place on 14 November at Rotterdam’s gallery A Tale of a Tub. The series is intended to shed new light on a society in which migration is a determinant factor and is inextricably linked to contemporary social, political and economic realities. According to the event’s media release, “The gates of Europe are being met by more refugees than ever. Meanwhile, the migratory question is leading to internal disunion as instability in the surrounding regions of the EU increases,” The first chapter of the two month film programme featured works by Alfredo Jaar and Mounir Fatmi. Other participants included Chantal Akerman, Fouad Elkory, Isaac Julien, Runo Lagomarsino, Paulo Nazareth, Adrian Paci, Nicolas Provost and Zineb Sedira. The Migrant (Moving) Image is curated by Nathanja van Dijk.

mounir fatmi on various exhibitions worldwide

Biennials exhibiting work by Mounir Fatmi include the 1st TRIO Biennial, Rio de Janeiro under the title Who said that tomorrow doesn’t exist? until 8 December; the 2nd International Bodrum Biennial in Turkey titled Tolerance, until 2 November; and the 10th Rencontres de Bamako – Biennale Panafricaine de Photographie in Bamako, Mali, titled Telling Time, which runs from 31 October to 31 December.
Group shows exhibiting Fatmi include Global Control and Censorship at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany until 1 May 2016, and the Jameel Prize 3 at the National Library in Singapore until 30 November.

Mounir Fatmi in Brazil

Mounir Fatmi is included in this year’s 1st Trio Biennale in Rio de Janeiro from 4 September to 8 December. The biennal, titled Who said that tomorrow doesn’t exist? is an international exhibition of contemporary art around three-dimensional sculpture, installations and objects taking into account the expanded fields of painting, photography, performance and video. Other exhibitions showing the work of Fatmi include Espace Arlaud in Geneva, titled Seins à Dessein from 12 September to 8 November as well as the 2nd International Bodrum Biennial in Turkey, titled Tolerance, from 12 September to 12 November.

Mounir Fatmi in Miami, Brooklyn, Marrakech and Thessaloniki

The solo exhibition Modern Times takes place at Miami Beach Urban Studios Gallery, Florida International University, Miami Beach until 28 August, curated by Alpesh Patel. Fatmi is also included on the group exhibitions Diverse works: Director’s Choice, 1997-2015 at the Brooklyn Museum, in New York until 2 August; Traces of the Future at the Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts, Morocco until 30 September; FOMO at Sextant & +, Marseille, France until 2 August; and at the 5th Thessaloniki Biennale in Greece until 30 September.

Mounir Fatmi in Geneva

Mounir Fatmi’s Permanent Exiles is a mid-career retrospective bringing together 25 sculptures, installations and films produced since the opening decade of the millennium. According to the gallery statement the exhibition ‘tackles issues of discontinuity, physical and mental detachment and the vulnerability they cause.’ At the Musee d’art Moderne et Contemporaine in Geneva, Switzerland until 10 May

Mounir Fatmi solo and group exhibitions worldwide

Mounir Fatmi’s forthcoming solo exhibitions include C’est encore la nuit for Institut Français de Meknès at Prison Kara, Meknès, Morocco that opens on 14 April; a special six-hour screening of Sleep Al Naim to be shown in the framework of the 20th Anniversary of the MAMCO, Cinema Le Spoutnik, Geneva, Switzerland on 10 May and the rounding off of Permanent Exiles at MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland until 10 May. Forthcoming group exhibitions showing the work of Fatmi include Diverse works: Director’s Choice, 1997-2015 at the Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA from 15 Apri to 2 August; The Jameel Prize 3 at the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Art, UAE until 6 June; Fotofest 2014: View from the Inside at Abu Dhabi Music & Art Festival, UAE until 20 April; You love me, you love me not at Galeria Municipal do Porto, Portugal until 17 May; 1914-2014. Cent ans de création au Maroc at MMVI Musée Mohammed VI, Rabat, Morocco until 28 May and The Sublime: Contemporary Works from the Collection at QAGOMA, Brisbane, Australia until 24 May.

Mounir Fatmi in Tours

The solo exhibition by Mounir Fatmi titled Walking on the Light shows at the Centre de Création Contemporaine in Tours, France, until in 18 January 2015. Group shows exhibiting the work of Fatmi into 2015 include the inaugural exhibition 1914-2014: One Hundred Years of Creation in Morocco at the Musée Mohammed VI in Rabat, Morocco that runs until June 2015; Le Maroc Contemporain at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France that runs until 25 January, 2015; Memory, Place, Desire: Contemporary Art of the Maghreb and the Maghrebi Diaspora at the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford college, until 15 December and Entre Nosotros (Between us) that runs at the Centro de Arte y Technologia, in Zaragoza, Spain, until 28 February 2015.

Mounir Fatmi at Fotofest 2014 Biennial

mounir fatmi will take part in the 2014 Fotofest Biennial in Houston, Texas, under the title View From Inside: Contemporary Arab Video, Photography and Mixed Media Art. Forty-nine leading contemporary Arab artists living and working in 13 countries have been selected to participate in the principal exhibitions, curated by Karin Adrian von Roques and Wendy Watriss. The biennial takes place from 15 March – April 27 2014.

Mounir Fatmi at Prison Sainte-Anne

Mounir Fatmi appears on the show The Disappearance of Fireflies at the Prison Sainte-Anne in Avignon, France. Taking its name from a famous text by filmmaker and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini the exhibition, held in a former prison situated behind Avignon’s Papal Palace, presents highlights of the region’s Collection Lambert, a donation made by Yvon Lambert comprising 556 contemporary works. The curator is Eric Mézil of Collection Lambert and the show runs until November 25. Fatmi also appears on Colonial Apocrifa that runs at MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon, Spain, (until January 6 2015), on the The Sea is my Land, Triennale di Milano, Milano, Italy (until August 24); Colonia Apocrifa at MUSAC in Leon, Spain (until January 6 2015) and Giving Contours to Shadows at N.B.K., Berlin, Germany (July 31).

mounir fatmi at MAD New York

Mounir Fatmi has work featured on the exhibition ‘Body & Soul: New International Ceramics’ at the Museum of Art and Design in New York. Fatmi’s work is being displayed alongside 24 international artists in the exhibition, which aims to “underscore the power of the figure to convey strong emotions, and also to the accessibility of the ceramic medium”. The exhibition runs until 2 March 2014.

mounir fatmi on various international shows

mounir fatmi is exhibiting on various major international shows in 2013 including Ici, Ailleurs at the Marseille-Provence 2013 European cultural capital (12 January – 7 April 2013) and Le Pont in the Museum of contemporary Art both in Marseille, France (25 May – 20 October 2013). He will also be exhibiting on 25 years of arab creativity at the Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi, UAE. (05 – 31 March 2013) and on the 5th Auckland Triennial in New Zealand (10 May – 11 August 2013). Later in the year fatmi will be exhibiting at the Bahrain National Museum and in Bodies Speaking Out: New International Ceramics at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Mounir Fatmi shortlisted for the 3rd edition of the Jameel Prize

mounir fatmi has been shortlisted for the 3rd edition of the Jameel Prize, to be exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London from 11 December 2013 until 21 April 2014. Although the shortlist is diverse, all the artists and designers are directly inspired by sources rooted in the Islamic tradition. The works on show will range from Arabic typography and calligraphy to fashion inspired by the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, and from social design and video installation to delicate and precise miniature drawings. The winner of the Jameel Prize 3 will be announced at the V&A on 10 December 2013.

mounir fatmi at Dak'art 2012 and Manif d'Art 6

mounir fatmi will participate in Dak’art 2012, the 10th Biennial of Contemporary African Art in Dakar, Senegal, under the theme of ‘Contemporary creation and social dynamics’, curated by Christine Eyene, Nadira Laggoune and Riason Naidoo. The exhibition takes place from 11 May to 12 June 2012.

His work is also included in Manif d’Art 6, the Quebec City Biennial, under the theme ‘Machines – the Shapes of Movement’. The exhibition is curated by Nicole Gingras and takes place from 3 May to 3 June 2012.

For more information about Dak’art 2012 please click here (site is in French)
Fore more information about Manif d’Art 6, please click here

On September 6th, Dublin Contemporary 2011 opens its first edition. Titled Terrible Beauty – Art, Crisis, Change and The Office of Non-Compliance, Ireland’s first major international contemporary art event will run until October 31st. The main exhibition at Earlsfort Terrace features 114 artists from 5 continents, and is curated by New York-based curator and writer, Christian Viveros-Fauné, and Franco-Peruvian artist and curator, Jota Castro.

Hasan and Hussein Essop, Rosenclaire (a collaboration between Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky) and mounir fatmi are all participating in the Dakar Biennale. One of the biggest contemporary art events on the African continent, the Biennale will premiere fatmi’s movie “Beautiful Language”. This first version of the video “Beautiful Language” is inspired by Truffaut movie, L’Enfant Sauvage.

The Dakar Biennale will take place in Dakar Senegal from 7 May to 7 June 2010.

Mounir Fatmi / The Kissing Precise

A new edition of The Kissing Precise – an artist book bringing together recent work by Mounir Fatmi including Casablanca Circles, The Death of the Straight Lines, Kissing Circles – was released in June 2014. These artworks find common ground in their reference to the poem written by Frederick Soddy The Kiss Precise. This book was published by the Editons La Muette – Au bord de l’eau in English and French.

Borders at Johannesburg Art Gallery

Johannesburg Art Gallery is hosting a small-scale version of the 8th Bamako Encounters African Photographic Biennial, which took place in Mali the end of 2009. Curated by Michket Krifa and Laura Serani, the theme of the 2009 Biennial was Borders and the show tackled the consequence that borders on the African continent continue to carry. “In Africa,” the curators say, “more than anywhere else, borders are a major issue, whether they are artificial lines drawn up by men or natural barriers, they generally delineate spaces of political sovereignty.”

Goodman Gallery represented artists Kader Attia, Jodi Bieber and mounir fatmi all took part in the biennial in Mali and have work on the show at JAG. Attia’s series Square Rocks (2009) explore borders as a hindrance to a better life; rendering hope nothing more than unattainable chimera. Attia photographed the youths of Bab El-oued, a poor district in the Algiers where he spent his summer vacations growing up. This is where young people, Attia explains, go to “loiter, smoke cigarettes, fish, some engage in prostitution… but mainly, they spend hours sitting on those blocks, as though hypnotised, watching the comings and goings of the ships that link Algeria and Europe… This beach is the very last border separating them from that continent, and above all from their dreams of a better life.”

In Jodi Bieber’s Going Home series (2001) – which won the European Union prize for documentary photography – crossing borders is not merely a dream, but a necessity and, ultimately a fruitless and painful ordeal. Bieber documented the period after devastating floods in Mozambique in 2000. “At the same time in South Africa,” she explains, “Operation Crackdown was in progress. This was an ongoing initiative by the police services to eliminate the high level of crime in our country and part of their duties was to detain illegal immigrants… in Lindela a repatriation centre in Krugersdorp. From there illegal immigrants from neighbouring countries would board a train which would take them back to their country of origin.”

Fatmi’s video installation History of History confronts what happens to a political luminary when he is removed from the moment in history that established his legacy. David Hilliard – Chief of Staff for the Black Panther Party in the 1960s – is the focus of the video, which reveals what a man who contested a prevailing power system, rose up against racial and economic disparity becomes almost half a century later.

Solo exhibitions

A copy of the Koran.
A photograph of a Moroccan King.
A calligraphic painting.

These are the only cultural objects that mounir fatmi remembers from his childhood home in 1970s Tangier – all of which he was forbidden to touch or were positioned out of reach, but which vividly captured his imagination.

In Fragmented Memory the Paris-based multimedia artist takes these objects as a starting point for his work ‘to show how the few elements of culture I had in my childhood home have shaped my artistic research, my aesthetic choices and my entire career,’ he says. fatmi adds that ‘through these objects, I draw a direct relationship to language, to memory, and to history in this show, because, for me, these three elements depend on one another: without language there is no memory and with no memory there is no history.’

In the late 1980s, fatmi left Morocco to study in Italy and Holland before settling in France. According to the artist: ‘I needed to step back from my country to be able to understand it and analyse its history.’ In Fragmented Memory fatmi furthers this personal journey by mining his memories – marking a rare autobiographical approach in his work.

fatmi calls himself ‘a migrant worker’ as a result of his feeling that he is always making work from a foreign place. Navigating this uprooted position has given rise to enthralling recent work, such as Roots, a large triptych wall relief made from reels of painstakingly twisted cable wire. Through the labyrinthine arrangement of meandering roots, which reference patterns found in ancient Islamic artwork, the artist asks, ‘Just how deep can a person’s roots go?’

Fragmented Memory expands on the artist’s objectives in his 2012 solo show at Goodman Gallery, Suspect Language – fatmi’s first with the gallery and in South Africa – in which he sought to construct visual and linguistic games aimed at freeing viewers from their preconceptions of politics and religion. Then, as now, he intended to ‘aesthetically trap the viewer’, as he puts it, in order to prompt new ways of seeing these structures. The thought-provoking work on display here covers a variety of mediums (sculpture, relief, installation, photography), with many pieces exhibited on the continent for the first time.

Some of the works reference fatmi’s Coma Manifesto, which he wrote 20 years ago and that would come to serve as a poetic guide for his artistic practice. It is made up of ‘very concentrated sentences that function like medicine,’ fatmi says, ‘and started with the poetic and provocative statement: ‘My father has lost all his teeth, I can bite him now’.’ The manifesto has since grown into a series of one-line warnings, remarks, instructions and advice that fatmi draws on in his works.

For this exhibition, fatmi has sculpted three distinct statements from metal plates. In Coma Manifesto 01, 02 and 03, letters have fallen out and lie scattered on the floor as an expression of the disillusionment and disorientation brought on by the artist’s traversal between Christian Europe and the North African country it colonised, where Islam dominates.

Fragmented Memory also features new work grappling with the concept of a collective national memory, such as The Visible Side of the King, a photographic series which explores the weight of myths that we project onto history. The work looks at the year 1953, during Morocco’s colonisation by France and Spain, when Moroccans reported seeing the face of King Mohammed V on the moon. According to fatmi, ‘The Moroccan people were under the influence of a collective hallucination. To reinforce the image of the king in exile and push citizens to revolt against the regime of France, Moroccan nationalists asked people to stare at photographs of the sultan that they had distributed and then to look up at the moon. There they saw his visage, not realising they were being tricked by an optical illusion. The subterfuge worked: Mohammed V, unaware of the ploy, received demonstrations of support in 1955, just before his return to Morocco and became known as the ‘moon king’.’

mounir fatmi was born in Tangier, Morocco. Today he lives and works between Paris and the city of his birth. He has had solo exhibitions at museums across Europe as well as Turkey and Morocco and has participated in group shows at institutions such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Brooklyn Museum, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha and the Victoria & Albert Museum. fatmi’s work has been selected for the Setouchi Triennial and for Biennales in Sharjah, Dakar, Seville, Gwangju, Lyon and Venice (including, most recently, the NSK State-in-Time Pavilion at the upcoming 57th Venice Biennale). fatmi has received several prizes, such as the Cairo Biennial Prize (2010), the Uriöt prize, Amsterdam and the Grand Prize Leopold Sedar Senghor of the 7th Dakar Biennial in 2006. He has also published four books on his practice, including Sans Histoire Paris (2012), Ghosting (2011), Megalopolis (2011) and This is not blasphemy, Paris (2015).

Moroccan-born and Paris-based multimedia artist mounir fatmi presents his first solo exhibition in South Africa, titled Suspect Language, at Goodman Gallery Cape Town in September.

mounir fatmi constructs visual spaces and linguistic games that aim to free the viewer from their preconceptions of politics and religion, and allow them to contemplate these and other subjects in new ways. His videos, installations, drawings, paintings and sculptures bring to light our doubts, fears and desires.

Suspect Language is an exhibition of recent work by mounir fatmi. Upon entering the gallery, the audience is confronted with Sleep Al Naim, a film projection in which a virtual, 3D image of Salman Rashdie, the English writer of Indian origin, is asleep. A fatwa was declared against Rushdie by the Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, due to the perceived blasphemy in his novel The Satanic Verses, and the book was banned in most Arab countries. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s experimental film Sleep, the artist chose Rushdie as his main character, showing him asleep, as if in a state between life and death. This is the state that the artist seeks to convey in Suspect Language.

The artist uses censorship as a point of departure, raising doubt in the Quran’s ‘suraths’ (phrases) in In the Absence of Evidence to the Contrary, and writing his manifesto on horse-jumping poles in Obstacles, Coma, Warning.

mounir fatmi questions written text and its visual poetry, highlighting a paradox between its beauty and its violence, its meaning and its shape. In Kissing Circles, inspired by the Frederick Soddy poem The Kiss Precise, he uses coaxial antenna cable to interpret the solution to the Descartes Theorem, and asks: How we can come from a mathematics problem to a language, like a poem?

In Calligraphy of Fire, fatmi celebrates the beauty of calligraphy, and sees fire in the shape of the text, creating an association to a text that burns, that could be censored, but also to a text that has the potential to purify. The work is also a tribute to Brion Gysin, an artist of the Beat Generation who lived in Morocco and whose work was inspired by Arabic calligraphy.

The Game is a series of photographs taken from Francois Truffaut’s 1970 film L’Enfant Sauvage, in which a wild child is taught the rudiments of language through a game. The work is a reference to early anthropological ideas about otherness and the way the “savage” mind understands words and graphic representations, as well as a metaphor for France’s interest in the “other” during the colonial era. The doctor’s incessant note-taking represents the attempt to control, while the implicit violence in the series suggests the explicit violence of imposed authority. Language plays a crucial role in trying to unify doctor and subject, coloniser and colonised.

In Modern Time, A History of the Machine, circular calligraphies are suspended, reminiscent of a system of cogs or a gear mechanism. The title of the piece is inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s celebrated 1936 film, in which Chaplin plays a lowly worker on a factory production line. The modernity of the factory machines is evoked visually by a series of whirring cogs. The curves and arabesques of the calligraphy eclipse the meaning of the words, as if the message is disappearing into the engine of the machine. The words are reanimated in a purely visual way as circular abstract forms, reflecting the circular motion of the animation.

mounir fatmi was born in 1970 in Tangier, Morocco. Solo exhibitions of his work have been shown all over the world, and he has participated in numerous major group exhibitions – including, most recently, the 6th Quebec City Biennial and the 54th Venice Biennale. He lives and works between Paris and Tangier.

the silences between brings together major works by a selection of pre-eminent contemporary artists who use varying modes of storytelling to rethink, rework and reimagine the world and our place within it.

The title is taken from the Maori poetry book, The Silences Between: (Moeraki conversations) in which writer Keri Hulme prompts the question: ‘What is recorded in the writing of history and what is left out?’

The exhibition considers the role of the artist in questioning how meaning is made and what is recorded in visual memory. Works by artists such as Paulo Nazareth (Brazil), William Kentridge (South Africa), Candice Breitz (South Africa/Germany), Nolan Oswald Dennis (Zambia/South Africa), Grada Kilomba (Portugal/Germany) and Samson Kambalu (Malawi/UK) confront this process and offer alternatives to the ‘grand narrative’ of Western thought.

This exhibition takes its cue from Donna Haraway’s influential book Staying With The Trouble (2016), in which the prominent academic argues that the world cannot be understood ‘as the heroic story, told yet one more time, of the privileged signifier moving across time and space to bring back the prize at the end and die’.

the silences between presents works that expose the layered scaffolding of ‘meaning-making’ through the telling of everyday stories of ordinary people and seemingly insignificant events that have been left out of the dominant narrative.

‘The show seeks to activate the small but crucial stories that are so often forgotten, and in so doing offer new ways of crafting sensibilities,’ says curator Emma Laurence. ‘Through interfering with systems of knowledge production and archiving, the works puncture the overarching narratives of our globalised world.’

In 2016, Goodman Gallery celebrates its 50th anniversary – five decades of forging change through artistic production and dialogue, shaping contemporary art within and beyond the continent. From early June, we will host major exhibitions between our Johannesburg and Cape Town galleries featuring significant work, installations, interventions, performances, a video and talks programmes.

Titled New Revolutions, our programme will include prominent international and African artists – each part of the Goodman Gallery’s history, present and future – engaging with the idea of perpetual change, alternative independent movements and the reinvigorating of ideology based upon mutable historical realities. The project as a whole will consider Goodman Gallery’s history as an inclusive space, as well as its approach to showing contemporary art that shifts perspectives and engenders social transformation.

New Revolutions recalls the fulcrum of activity into which the gallery was borne 50 years ago: revolutionary fervour, the gradual decolonisation of African countries and radical responses to the status quo. Locally, the gallery maintained a responsibility to show work by South African artists as museums served the agenda of the discriminatory government. By transcending its role as a commercial space Goodman Gallery rose to prominence as a progressive institution. And, while South Africa was deep in the throes of a draconian era, figures within the fight for African independence trail-blazed the struggle against apartheid. This exhibition reflects on how the events in Africa then, still play a part in the conceptual thinking of artists now. And, beyond that, how artists have responded to new forms of economic colonisation, migrancy, as well as radicalised reactions to economic inequality and lingering institutional racism.

By considering how the roles of artists cross into the realm of activism and socially transformative endeavours, New Revolutions explores historical and contemporary tensions and movements that are unfolding in Africa and around the world, through the panorama of contemporary art.

The 2016 anniversary programme highlights Goodman Gallery’s ongoing affiliation with artists who explore the power of dissent and the importance of alternative factions and cross-disciplinary collaborations in order to engender change and encourage dialogue. A non-chronological, intergenerational but conceptually linked collection of artworks from the 1960s to the present will focus on the spirit of protest, resistance, and revolution, and the way in which South Africa, and Goodman Gallery in particular, has offered an important platform from which to explore such approaches.

The Artists

On the occasion of its 50th anniversary Goodman Gallery takes pleasure in announcing new partnerships with some of the world’s most significant artists – Sonia Gomes (Brazil), Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola), Shirin Neshat (Iran) – revealing new directions in the gallery’s programme. Locally, we announce the representation by Goodman Gallery of Tabita Rezaire and The Brother Moves On. In addition, the exhibition will include work by international artists Kapwani Kiwanga (US) and Jacolby Satterwhite (US).

New Revolutions will provide an opportunity to exhibit those who have worked with the gallery for decades including William Kentridge, David Koloane, Sam Nhlengethwa, David Goldblatt and Tracey Rose, and some of the most influential younger voices in contemporary art including Kudzanai Chiurai, Hasan and Husain Essop, Mikhael Subotzky, Gerald Machona and Haroon Gunn-Salie. The show will also include artists who have been integral in the gallery’s transformation over the past decade, including Ghada Amer, Candice Breitz, Alfredo Jaar, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, and Hank Willis Thomas. Performances will be presented by local innovators, Nelisiwe Xaba and The Brother Moves On.
Beyond this, the iconic significance of the gallery, and the historical moment necessitates that certain artists whose ideas and actions impacted on society, and on the course of art history, be included. Artists like Walter Wahl Battis, Cecil Skotnes, Ezrom Legae, Leonard Matsotso and Sydney Khumalo are exhibited as part of our endeavour to show how the regeneration of ideas – and the gallery as a repository of change – is not confined to epochs.

With New Revolutions we invite you to celebrate with Goodman Gallery as we pay homage to artists who have shaped the landscape of contemporary art in Southern Africa. These include artists based on the continent, those of the Diaspora, our northern counterparts who have been distanced from sub-Saharan Africa and those from outside of Africa whose work explores territory such as unequal power structures and socio-political constructs.

New Revolutions is curated by Liza Essers and will take place throughout the month of June at our Johannesburg and Cape Town galleries, and with a special selection of works for Art Basel from 16 June to 19 June.

Edge of Silence is a group show featuring artwork by some of Goodman Gallery’s leading contemporary artists.

The title is taken from a light box with transparency created by Alfredo Jaar that illuminates the words ‘OTHER PEOPLE THINK’, a quote from the youthful writings of John Cage in which Cage “affirms silence as an opportunity to learn what other people think.” Jaar’s light box follows this practice with a kind of silence opens up a space for listening by disrupting our thoughts and perceptions, inviting us to step outside ourselves.

Sleeping, a recurring motif in Kentridge’s work, is used as a metaphor for a state of self-imposed blissful ignorance in which the outside world may be forgotten as the sleeper closes herself off into her internal world. This notion, coupled with the fragility and transparency of glass, evokes a dangerous situation leading to a painful, if not actually destructive, moment of awakening and recognition in Kentridge’s series of prints Sleeping on Glass.

Liza Lou’s Untitled bead canvases emphasize repetition, formal perfection, and materiality, but thrives on the tension between silent beauty and the presence of traces of bodily residue in the beaded strips that establishes many of the social themes, such as uncelebrated women’s work, that underpin her work.

Works on exhibition reference cultural moments and artistic practice that is at times interrogative, celebratory, or a means of bearing witness. Yet in all instances they complicate and remediate so as to bring about a new framework for understanding or experiencing that which exists already.

“Imagine them reconstructing the conceptual framework of our cultural moment from those fragments. What are the parameters of that moment, the edge of that framework?” K Eshun (2003)
Other People’s Memories is a group show which explores the ways in which history and memory exist in the process of making, as well as the process of viewing, and by extension, the relationship between the artist, the artwork and the viewer.
The works included in the exhibition are the result of the artists’ relationship to something which has already happened, so that the artwork becomes an act of insertion, where the artists’ personal history becomes part of the historical, social or cultural moment which is referenced. In some instances the physical presence of the artists and their surroundings is consciously transferred to the artwork.
In Moshekwa Langa’s drawings, the artist uses string, tape and paint to map his memories and encounters. He includes domestic items like salt and wine, which he works into the fibrous paper and permeable string, so that the marks he makes are made viscerally – making overt the artist’s physical presence.
Transferral and human presence is also evoked in the beaded canvases of Liza Lou, who along with her team of skilled Zulu woman beaders, produces visual meditations on imperfect artistic production. The canvases retain traces of sweat, dirt and even blood which are testament to the fragile delicacy of her production and become a site of memory, recording the long struggle and sublime discomfort involved in the act of making.
Mikhael Subotzky’s work Sticky Tape Transfer 03 is formed through a process, developed by the artist, whereby adhesive tape is applied and then removed from images that feature in the artist’s personal history. In this delicate process, the tape picks up pigments and fragments of the original image so that a replica is formed. The pigments and fragments from the image are not all that is transferred onto the tape: dust and grime from the studio also become trapped in the glue, so that the image is made up not only of itself but also from the physical surroundings of the artist. Subotzky’s images then, become a meditation on memory itself. Like Subotzky’s transfers, a memory – each time it is evoked – is revised. Some parts are forgotten and left behind with the splinters and fragments of context replacing them.
The physical presence of the maker is made apparent in Kendell Geers’ work Foiled – where the artist has imprinted a religious figurine of Christ on the Cross on a large sheet of tin foil. Due to the delicate nature of the tin foil, the dents and folds deliberately made by the artists to demarcate the indented image are not the only marks on the material. As Geers manipulates the tin foil to create the image at its centre, his movement is picked up by the material so that the foil retains not only a visual “memory” of the devotional object but also a memory of how it came to be. The exhibition also allows for an exploration of how the artwork exists not only as something which contains the artists’ personal history – which happens in the process of making – but also how the viewer’s own history is projected onto the referred moment during the process of viewing and interpreting. Nolan Oswald Dennis’ work Tunnel 001 investigates the use of fire and what the artist terms “civil burnings” in the historical formation of South Africa.
The work consists of a plywood tunnel, the interior of which is covered in a thin layer of paraffin wax. Historical and personal accounts of how fire and burning existed in the formation of South African independence are carved into the wax. Like the foil in Geers’ work, the brittle yet stiff surface of the wax in Tunnel 001 means that in rewriting the texts, the artist physically changes what was originally written. Mistakes are made and words are scratched out, the wax breaks and obscures words, sentences run into each other and it becomes difficult to determine a precise starting and ending point. The size of the tunnel, which is just high enough to accommodate a human body, means that viewers are unable to gain perspective, and are forced by the physical constraints of the work to look at the carvings as fragments, and read the altered texts in pieces, so that each viewer has a different experience and constructs a different narrative and meaning. Where Dennis replicates and reworks texts onto a new surface, William Kentridge works directly onto archival documents, merging his drawing process into all that is contained by the archival document. Kentridge has worked with pages from an old cash book from East Rand Proprietary mines from 1906. In this way, the artist has worked the writing, texture and marks on the pages of the book into the landscapes – so that the history which the pages record becomes intrinsic to the landscape.

The archive, in this case, is directly altered by the artist’s charcoal landscapes, allowing for a rumination of the effect of the past on the landscape and exploring the tension between the reclaiming of damaged ground by the ever evolving and growing landscape – and the extent to which landscape remembers trauma. While Kentridge explores the extent to which trauma and social injustice is evoked in the landscape,
David Goldblatt considers the ways in which loss and memory are contained within manmade monuments. In his 2014 series, Structures of Dominion and Democracy, Goldblatt continues his reflection on the structures and monuments that frame a particular vision of South African history. The new series concentrates on, but is not entirely devoted to, the period after the fall of apartheid, and features images of makeshift memorials, public monuments, and artworks which memorialize moments of trauma and allow for attempts at national catharsis. The works interrogate the practice of memorializing history and the ideologies that govern this practice. Whereas Goldblatt documents and investigates the ways in which monuments are constructed amongst different groups, Alfredo Jaar works with a historical photograph of Italian artist Lucio Fontana after his return from his native Argentina to Milan in 1946. The image shows Fontana standing amongst the ruins of his studio which was destroyed during World War II. The image, which the artist sourced from the Farabola archive in Rome, has been enlarged to a 2,5 × 2,5 metres square. Beyond the evident display of destruction and loss caused by war, this image marks an extraordinary moment in history where a group of artists and intellectuals were able to overcome years of isolation and devastation and reintroduce Italian culture to the world. This group includes Fontana in visual arts as well as Rossellini, Visconti and De Sica in film, Moravia, Pavese or Ungaretti in literature and the later generation of filmmakers like Antonioni, Bertolucci, Pasolini and artists like Pistoletto, Boetti, Calzolari and countless others who illuminated the cultural scene of Italy and the world.
Jaar first showed this image during the 2013 Venice Biennale as part of his project Venezia, Venezia, which was a call to artists and intellectuals across the globe to rethink the current unbalanced structure of contemporary art display and representations of the world in general. As Jaar points out, “artists create models of thinking the world”. By alluding to the power which culture demonstrated back in 1946, the artist encourages culture to once again overcome the present social, geographical, political, and cultural imbalances still aggravating the world.
Haroon Gunn Salie begins from the point of a South African identity of Diaspora – and a history of colonialism and slavery.
Gunn Salie has produced a metal cut out of the words KOMOORDIESEE – a line from the popular “Kaapseklopse” and slave song Die Alabama. Working in The Belfast Exposed archive – which contains photographs documenting the Troubles in Northern Island – photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin were interested in the process of selection, and the physical marks made on the photographic contact strips in the archive.Marks were made both by the succession of archivists who worked with the archive, and as the archive was made open to the public, marks and cuts made by individuals who defaced images of themselves.
The archive, then, is not only a collection of images which document the troubles, but the images themselves – they too become surfaces which bear testimony to the physical manipulation and handling of history and documentation.
In the works on the exhibition the artists have brought to light the process of selection and deletion by uncovering parts of the images which have been covered by archivists’ stickers and deleting the rest of the image. In the process of exposing what was covered and deleting what was not, the artists make over the ways in which cataloguing and selection impact on an archive. When the works are installed in the gallery the images – now devoid of their context – trigger different responses in the viewers, who must use their own backgrounds and history to make meaning of the images’ sequences.
Mounir Fatmi works within the realm of art history and visual culture. Taking the Italian Renaissance artist Fra Anglico’s painting The Healing of Deacon Justinian as his starting point, Fatmi questions the possibility of traversing ethnic and cultural barriers. A digital replica of Angelico’s painting has been printed on a mirrored surface. The painting depicts the Catholic hagiology of the Deacon Justinian, whose cancerous leg was replaced with that of an a dead Ethiopian by the saints Cosmas and Damian – twin doctors of Turkish descent who were martyred in the Catholic faith after they were beheaded under Diocletian persecution.
Fatmi places composites images of modern surgeries and trauma rooms onto the Angelico image so that the saints and the deacon appear as ghostly forms in the modern world. Like so many of his works, in Blinding Light, Mounir Fatmi does not provide the viewer with an answer or solution to ethnic and cultural barriers – but rather through a merging of media, time and origin he includes the viewer in the a process of complicating and questioning the past.
The mirrored surface of the work means that in the proccess of looking, the viewer becomes part of the layered imagery. Bodies are reflected in the parts of the work which are still reflective and hidden in the parts which have been been covered by the photographic print. Again, medium is used as a visual analogy for contemplating that which has come before, where the viewer, as in Frangelico’s painting, becomes a ghostly presence in a reworking and re-imagining of the past. In her dual channel video work Treatment, – Candice Breitz also works with insertion and reception, through revising and editing David Cronenberg’s iconic 1970’s horror film The Brood.
Breitz enlists herself, her own mother and father, and her real-life psychotherapist to inhabit and re-create a series of scenes from The Brood.
As with the Cronenberg film,Treatment resists indulging concrete autobiographical information, denying onlookers voyeuristic access to Breitz’s actual relationships with her parents and therapist, and focusing instead on the psychological horror that potentially lies within family life.
Once again the work deals with the hidden that exists underneath the observable – and asks the viewer to engage with the reference, the artist’s intention and the narrative potential of their own history being brought to bear upon the works.

Surfacing is a group exhibition which allows for an exploration of the transient space between destruction and (re)construction. The exhibition aims to bring to light the fragments and residues that remain after destruction, and linger beneath a new form. In the preface to the 1961 edition of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, Jean-Paul Sartre writes “violence is man re-creating himself”. Although Sartre speaks of violence as a necessity for overthrowing colonial power, “no gentleness can efface the marks of violence; only violence itself can destroy them.” This exhibition understands Sartre’s notion to address culpability, selfhood and violence and trauma involved in the process of becoming, scrutinizing and (re)creating.

Liza Lou’s Dirty White (2011-14) is a painting woven entirely out of glass beads. Over a period of months, Lou and her studio assistants from eight different townships in KwaZulu-Natal wove white A4 sheets out of identical white beads. The resulting painting tells the story of its own making: pock marks, streaks, ruptures and dirt are imbedded in a kind of code that speaks of the blood, sweat and tears of everyday life. For Lou, it is precisely in the moments of imperfection that beauty emerges – quoting from Leonard Cohen’s Anthem (1992), Lou explains “there’s a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in.”

Kendell Geers’ sculpture Country Of My Skull is made from a cannibal trophy from New Caledonia; an artifact that by
its very nature is politicised and stands as a reference to violence and terror. The work’s title is taken from Antjie Krog’s literary account of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission – and expresses the artist’s constant battle between the paradoxical distancing of himself from a prejudiced and vicious heritage and the acknowledgement that he can never be entirely removed from it. In WaitingWantingWastingWorking Kendell Geers has produced a generic bed made from polished steel and razor mesh. For Geers the industrial phenomenon of razor mesh production – based on separation and othering, is a metaphor for the predicament of South Africa during Apartheid – as well as a metaphor for the artist who was born into the apartheid regime and struggled to understand the violence he was born out of and simultaneously born into. WaitingWantingWastingWorking has been made to be beautiful and monumental, while at the same time maintaining the original violence which has so informed Geers’ production throughout his career.

One million points of light by Alfredo Jaar was shot off the coast of Angola, in Luanda. It was taken while standing, facing the ocean directly towards Brazil, in memory of the 14 million slaves sent from Angola to Brazil. Jaar’s photograph is inviting in its beauty and physicality; the way in which the image has been photographed and Jaar’s decision to use a lightbox to display the photograph means that surface of the image becomes almost tangible. It appears as if the light hitting the water becomes a layer that could be peeled back like skin, revealing the deep suffering to which the artist alludes.

In an abridged version of the large installation I was looking back, Mikhael Subotzky investigates the practice and mechanics of looking in relation to the history of South Africa, the history of photographic devices, and his own history as an artist. A number of the works on show have been smashed by the artist, creating a tension between document and object. The shattered surfaces become both unsettling and poignant, both concealing and recreating the image that lies beneath it.

mounir fatmi’s 3D rendered film Sleep Al Naim shows the writer Salman Rushdie sleeping peacefully, his bare chest heaving and falling to the rhythm of his breathing. The film borrows its imagery from Andy Warhol’s minimalist pop experimental film Sleep. Sleep Al Naim suggests the ambivalence of a physical abandonment, quiet and calm. Given the now notorious threats to Rushdie’s life, the film alludes to potential physical threat – and the viewer perhaps feels unease at watching Rushdie in a state of such vulnerability. This unease occurs against the alienation between the viewer and what is happening inside “Rushdie’s” mind – the ambivalence of quiet exists in these moments – when the torments of the mind exist in the unconscious.

William Kentridge’s 2007 body of work What Will Come is both a reflection on the way in which images are perceived and constructed by the human eye and a political statement about the violence and repercussions of colonialism. The works explore the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (at the time Abyssinia) in 1935-1936, drawing a connection between fascism and colonialism. Kentridge describes the works as “involving seeing twice. Seeing the image in one form and then reconstructing the image either in a mirror, or another optical device.” What Kentridge does then, is to deconstruct an image and ask for the viewer to reconstruct it using a series of optical devices. The drawings become fragments and remnants – with the full image existing only in the transient space of each viewer’s eye – and by extension mind. In evoking Italian amnesia about its colonial past, and the need for the re-evaluation of its violent heritage, Kentridge explores the duality of selfhood trauma involved in re-evaluating the self.

In Candice Breitz’s new video installation Treatment, the artist brings an original soundtrack to three key scenes from director David Cronenberg’s seminal film The Brood. In focusing on the family trauma at the heart of The Brood, Breitz pays tribute to Cronenberg’s ability to draw audiences into psychological identification with his characters, suggestively adding the voices of her own family to a palimpsest that already folds Cronenberg’s family narrative into that of the fictional family in The Brood. Staging an analogy between cinematic role-play and therapeutic role-play, The Brood and Treatment share – with their directors – a deep-seated interest in the formative nature of family relationships, a serious investment in the analytical potential of the moving image, and an absolute conviction in the potential of fiction to delve beneath the surface of things.

Haroon Gunn-Salie’s installation titled Amongst Men considers the figure of Imam Abdullah Haron, and the intersecting histories of Islam and the resistance to colonialism and apartheid in South Africa. The installation conceptually recreates Imam Haron’s funeral, which was attended by over 40 000 people after he was murdered by Apartheid police in 1969, by suspending a series of cast kufiya. It is accompanied by a haunting sound element: a recording of a poem written and read by James Matthews, which questions “Was he a patriot or terrorist?” – a reflection on the Imam’s legacy of resistance in contrast to his treatment at the hands of the Apartheid government.

Johan Thom’s work Recital (lend me your ears) consists of three prayer bead necklaces each fashioned from wooden beads, music strings and fifty individually engraved razorblades. Like a real set of prayer beads, the object is made to be handled as part of a highly personal, meditative reflection. The work exists as a silent symphony playing out in the mind of the viewer, and is constructed from the artist’s personal history as an immigrant from Europe. Thom states “this symphony has as much to do with my family, religion, as with war and the discovery of gold in Southern Africa in 1886. But more sinister meanings are present here: The appearance of sharp blades on the necklace serve to remind of the actual collection of ears as trophies by soldiers during the colonial wars in Africa. Instead of a crucifix each prayer bead terminates in another object associated with the larger history by and through which my identity is constructed.” As with Kentridge’s film, where the complete image exists only in the mind of the viewer, Thom’s violent heritage is replayed in the mind of each viewer who interacts with the components of the artist’s inherited history.

In The English Garden, Kudzanai Chiurai investigates Zimbabwe’s violent history as well as the way in which Africa is imagined in the west. Chiurai questions the “contemporary African condition” by juxtaposing the past and the present of a continent in the constant grip of violent civil wars. The painted body emerges from Chiurai’s landscapes as an ambivalent site, of simultaneous oppression and agency, as it negotiates the limits of action and freedom. It is precisely those moments of oppression and agency – destruction and reconstruction – that Chiurai explores, and that his characters simultaneously lament and cherish.

In Context presents a diverse group of international and South African artists who share a rigorous commitment to the dynamics and tensions of place, in reference to the African continent and its varied and complex iterations, and to South Africa in particular. The works – wide-ranging, frequently provocative – engage with a number of pressing questions about space, context, and geography.

In this gathering of artists – envisioned as a series of conversation and engagements – the question of context is posed once again, but problematised in various ways. The terms ‘local’ and ‘international’ are given new emphasis (especially at this juncture and in the context of one of the largest sporting events on the planet) and the following questions are posed: What does it mean to be a local artist in this age of the global? Do African artists wish to continue speaking of context? How do artists of the African Diaspora reflect on their distance from and proximity to home? Where is home? How have some artists living in Europe and the Americas inherited and absorbed an African heritage or sensibility, even when they have not visited the Continent? Have we reached a point in the story of contemporary art in which the term ‘African artist’ can be dispensed with or do we still require it as a marker of distance from Europe and North America? To what extent does the global art market rely upon or exploit the term to sell art in Europe and North America? Is there thus a distinction to be made between the way in which African artists represent themselves and the ‘Western’ reception of contemporary art from Africa?

Rather than present only artists from the African continent in this project, In Context also considers the works of artists who, though they may have some interest in South Africa, have not visited the country or anywhere else in Africa. Their connection to the continent might be one they have inherited from the history of slavery, or from the displacements of Diaspora and exile. The aim is to generate conversations between works and even to assess the relevance of the questions we have raised in the face of the works themselves. We may find ourselves entirely surprised by the answers. We hope to be provoked, to open engagements that overturn the concerns and themes we have offered, that render them more rather than less problematic, or that dispense with them altogether. We may indeed find that individual practice casts an entirely different light on the question of context.

In Context will take place in a number of non-commercial venues and, through a series of talks, walkabouts, and panel discussions, will promote engagement both with artists and audiences. The partners in this project take seriously the need to begin a number of collaborations that can be sustained beyond the events of In Context. They also seek to reach a wider audience than the usual gallery visitors and to promote appreciation of art through unconventional interventions outside of the traditional gallery space.

Mounir Fatmi was born in Tangier, Morocco in 1970 he lives and works between Paris and Tangier.

mounir fatmi constructs visual spaces and linguistic games.His work deals with the desecration of religious object, deconstruction and the end of dogmas and ideologies. He is particularly interested in the idea of death of the subject of
consumption. This can be applied to antenna cables, copier machines, VHS tapes, and a dead language or a political movement. His videos, installations, drawings, paintings and sculptures bring to light our doubts, fears and desires. They directly address the current events of our world, and speak to those whose lives are affected by specific events and reveals its structure. Mounir Fatmi’s work offers a look at the world from a different glance, refusing to be blinded by the conventions.

mounir fatmi’s work has been shown in numerous solo exhibition, in the Migros Museum für Gegenwarskunst, Zürich, Switzerland, at the PIcasso Museum, war and peace, Vallauris, at the FRAC Alsace, Sélestat, at the Contemporary Art Center Le Parvis, at the Fondazione Collegio San Caro, Modena.

He participated in several collective shows at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris,The Brooklyn Museum, New York, Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo,
Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha and the Hayward Gallery, London.

His installations have been selected in biennials such as the 52nd and 54th Venice Biennial, the 8th biennial of Sharjah, the 5th and 7th Dakar Biennial, the 2nd Seville Biennial, the 5th Gwangju Biennial and the 10th Lyon Biennial.

Mounir Fatmi was awarded by several prize such as the Cairo Biennial Prize in 2010, the Uriöt prize, Amsterdam and the Grand Prize Leopold Sedar Senghor of the 7th Dakar Biennial in 2006.